


The Wild Bunch Rides Again

by shadowkat67



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s05e21 Power Play, Meta, Other, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22340221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: "Suddenly it was sundown for [five] men. Suddenly their day was over. Suddenly the sky was bathed in blood. [Five] men who came too late and stayed too long...Unchanged men in a changing land. Out of step, out of place and desperately out of time. Born too late for their own times. Uncommonly significant for ours." --Tagline from The Wild Bunch by Sam PeckinpahA while back in an interview, Jeff Bell, showrunner of Angel Season 5, mentioned that Whedon yearned to end Angel a bit like the Wild Bunch. Fans were confused. The Wild Bunch?[Meta on the final episodes of Angel the Series.]
Kudos: 4
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	The Wild Bunch Rides Again

"Suddenly it was sundown for [five] men. Suddenly their day was over. Suddenly the sky was bathed in blood. [Five] men who came too late and stayed too long...Unchanged men in a changing land. Out of step, out of place and desperately out of time. Born too late for their own times. Uncommonly significant for ours." --Tagline from The Wild Bunch by Sam Peckinpah

A while back in an interview, Jeff Bell, showrunner of Angel Season 5, mentioned that Whedon yearned to end Angel a bit like the Wild Bunch. Fans were confused. The Wild Bunch?

The Wild Bunch is a 1969 western by Sam Peckinpah who more or less created the slow-mo violent action sequence that you now see in so many movies. The story is pretty simple - it's about an outlaw gang in the old west, circa the late 1800s who attempt to rob a Texas train, but fail miserably. Determined to change their fortunes, they go into a partnership of sorts with an evil Mexican General named "Mapache" Juerta, who employs them to steal a shipment of guns. When that goes awry and they realize Mapache has been using them as his puppets, killing their friend, Angel, who is the wet-behind the ears innocent - the wild bunch decide to turn the tables on the General and his gang in one last hurrah. "We won't survive this," says Pike, "and I won't make any of you do it - it's your choice. But I want to make Angel's death mean something. Our lives mean something. We won't be able to take them all out, but we can take out a few. And go out in a blaze of glory while doing it. Who's with me?" They entire bunch is - because everyone in the bunch adored Angel. They all want to take Mapache down and hopefully redeem themselves a little in the process.

In Powerplay, Ats 5. 21, Angel states pretty much the same speech. He, like Pike, is tired of being someone else's toy, or puppet. He's tired of playing games and going around and around and around the mulberry bush. As Illyria and Drogon point out playing the video game Spike's left them - it's meaningless after a while, yet addictive, compelling. Also as we see in the circular symbol of the black thorn kabbal, the powerful group that runs things - it's a gear, a wheel, a loop, a cage - grinding things onwards forever.

Now it's been a *very* long time since I last saw the Wild Bunch, but like Angel Season 5, Peckinpah is obsessed with circular images (as well as ant metaphors) - the beginning scene of the film which remains ingrained in my memory - starts with a close-up of a scorpion, then we pull back and see it covered with a circle of fire ants, then back again, see kids squatting in a circle around it pushing the fire ants at it and torturing the ants. Then pull back still further and see the nine men ride into town, the Wild Bunch. (The circles in the film represent the Bunch's trajectory - the first is the victims of the guns the bunch procures for the mexican general, the second the bunch themselves (the ants), and last the children or mexican general.) The final sequence also deals with circles, the Bunch is encircled by the mexican army and bullets are flying. The ants are basically turning on the children. In Angel, we have circles as well - the symbol, the circle of men around Drogon, then Angel biting Drogon at the center. We also have the mention of ants - Angel mentions how they are nothing but ants, that people are just ants for the slaughter and it's whomever has power that rules. Just like in the Wild Bunch - whoever is controlling the ants, rules. Yet - this appears to flip on itself in both the Wild Bunch and Powerplay - it looks like Angel and his friends are ants that Hamilton and the inner circle play with, but in reality - they are playing with inner circle. So the question now becomes who are the real ants? Humans, whom Angel calls weak, or  
the black thorn demon club pushing them at each other with sticks?

Back to circles:  
The symbol that Angel shows Wes and finds in the black thorn lair is the same symbol in the robot in Lineage, on Illyria's coffin, on the top of the fail safe in You're Welcome. And in this episode, Powerplay, Lindsey describes the group as a gear - the circle is a gear in a machine that makes it run. If you think about it - each time we saw the symbol it was attached to a machine of some sort - something that moved. In Lineage - the device that made the robot move and triggered a bomb, in You're Welcome the device that operated the fail-safe, and in Hole in the World the device that opened the coffin. Open, operate, move. Like a game of go or and infinite game between select players.

In James P. Carse's book - Finite and Infinite Games - a vision of life as play and possibility - he notes there are two types of games - one for the purpose of winning, one for the purpose of continuing the play. He also notes that there is not a game unless the players choose to play it, and no one can play who is forced to play. Whoever must play, cannot play - you have to choose to play the game. In Angel this season, we've had lots of references to games, particularly in the last few episodes. This harkens back to former episodes, Dead End ATS S2, where Lindsey tells Angel the key to WR&H is not to let them make you play their game. Remember no one can make you play. You have to get them to play your game. Gunn repeats this view actually in Inside/Out to Fred where he states, you flip over the playing board. Now Angel says the same thing - we stop playing their game. He has in effect stopped letting them pull his strings. Something Cordelia of all people shows him - why does it have to be Cordelia? Because for the past four seasons the PTB pulled Cordy's strings, she let herself be their pawn - so instead of passing on her visions to Angel per se - she passes on her insight - she shows him he has a choice, he can either continue being a cog in the big machine, a puppet, or he can break out and start his own game separate from theirs. We have free will.

Each of the power-brokers in the inner circle represent the villians this season. The Senator who is a demon soul in a woman's body - probably courtesy of Hainsely from Just Rewards, also an echo of Illyria taking over Fred perhaps?  
Vail - who represents the erasure of memory and mind-wipe.  
Izzy the devil - who is from You're Welcome. The Arche-Duke from Life of The Party. And of course Marcus Hamilton who appears to be Drogon's twin. One who can't tell a lie and is virtuous - granted immortality for a noble cause, the other nothing but lies and manipulation - evil, granted immortality for a less than noble cause. Photo-negatives of each other.  
Twins. And of course the Senator with her smart vamp, and Angel with Gunn - Gunn and the vamp echoing each other - the vamp in his suit reminding us a bit perhaps of Gunn at the start of the season? All these villians have one thing in common - they are string pullers - they play games. In the film noir, Ripley's Game - Ripley, who lacks conscience, amuses himself by playing games with people. He is interested to see if he can get an innocent man to kill. Can he push the right buttons. Just one kill. That's all he wants. He gets off on the power of it. The ability to manipulate someone else without them knowing it. The man does not knowingly play Ripley's game, yet he does allow himself to be used by Ripley in it. The man in Ripley's Game reminds me a bit of Angel - who has allowed others to play him, not knowingly and certainly not willingly, but has done so all the same. Vail, the Senator, the Arche-Duke, are seen doing things similar to Ripley - not obvious things like killing people out-right, no behind the scenes manipulations. The Arche-Duke with his slave on the leash, or the Senator with her policies and laws that allow certain evils to continue, or Vail with his magics manipulating time and space. Little manipulations like the ones that got Illyria's coffin across oceans.

Angel like Pike in the Wild Bunch has grown sick of this. The little manipulations, the strings - he has decided to create his own game and he, unlike in Home with the mind-wipe, has asked his friends to join him - because like he states you can't do it alone. Also like Pike, Angel is making a powerplay of sorts, but not quite the same one that Drogon, Lorne or Illyria discuss. Angel isn't interested in taking power or territory - so much as regaining his own power. He's acknowledged he and his friends have power - that power is in a simple phrase - "free will/choice" and it is the power that he yanked back from Jasmin in Peace-out and is now yanking back from the SP.

**Author's Note:**

> Final notes:
> 
> -Drogon's death. Drogon had lived over a thousand years. He had chosen to be a jailer and keeper of others, restricting power. Like the old ones he safe-guarded, he no longer belongs in the world. I honestly think Angel did him a favor.  
> Also his death reminds me a bit of Eve's loss of her immortality. Again - an immortal dying.
> 
> \- I don't think Illyria is dead and I'm still not unconvinced that there's more than an ounce of Fred in her yet. As Spike states - her greatest power is her resemblance to Fred, wonder what would happen if that resemblance was more than skin-deep?  
> I think there's more than one mislead here, but I could be wrong. Completely unspoiled on the finale. Do *not* spoil me!
> 
> \- The call outs to The Wild Bunch in both BTVS and ATS: Whedon named three of his vampire characters after the bunch - Gorche brothers, and Angel. He named the boyfriend in the movie version after Pike. (Also we have Spike). The ant metaphor. And now the speech.
> 
> * citation note: The taglines are slightly alterred and from the 1969 Western, The Wild Bunch by Sam Peckinpauh, starring William Holden (as Pike), Ernest Borgnine (as Dutch) and Robert Ryan as (Deke), plus Warren Oates and Ben Johnson as the Gorche brothers. And Jamie Sanchez as their friend, the innocent Angel - see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065214/ for more information.]


End file.
